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Ronald Johnson (poet)
Ronald Johnson (November 25, 1935 - March 4, 1998) was an American poet.Ronald Johnson, Map of Kansas Literature. Web, Oct. 12, 2014. Life Johnson was born in Ashland, Kansas, the son of Helen (Mayse), a trained dancer, and A.T. Johnson, a carpenter who owned a lumber yard. His family moved to Topeka, Kansas, in the mid-1950s. In the late 1950s he lived in New York City and attended Columbia University, from which he earned a B.A. in 1960. At Columbia, he met and befriended poet Jonathan Williams, who introduced him to Louis Zukofsky, Robert Duncan, Robert Creeley, and Charles Olson. Together Johnson and Williams hiked the Applachian Trail, and made a walking tour of England (which would inspire Johnson's pastoral poem, The Book of the Green Man (1967).Eric Murphy Selinger, "Biography" by Eric Murphy Selinger from The Dictionary of Literary Biography In the 1970s he was writer in residence at the University of Kentucky, and then held the Roethke Chair for Poetry at the University of Washington. He then settled in San Francisco, where he became poet in residence at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1994. He also worked as a chef and caterer, and authored 5 cookbooks on American regional cooking. In 1993 Johnson returned to Topeka, where he worked part-time as a cookie baker. Johnson, once described by Guy Davenport as America's greatest living poet, died at his father's home in Topeka on March 4, 1998. Writing At the beginning of his career Johnson was allied with the Black Mountain poets' 2nd generation, but then began to experiment with the poetics of the concrete poetry movement. Johnson's major work is the long poem ARK, which he began in 1970 and which took him 20 years to write. It is a poem following in the tradition of the "American epic", a heritage once described as "that strange, amorphous, anomalous, self-contradictory thing".Pearce, Roy Harvey. The Continuity of American Poetry. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961 This mythology of an ambitious and protean epic project – grand in creation and design – beginning (arguably) with Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass was continued into the 20th-century by Ezra Pound's The Cantos, Louis Zukofsky's "A", William Carlos Williams' Paterson, Charles Olson]]'s The Maximus Poems, Robert Duncan's Passages, Gertrude Stein's Stanzas in Meditation, and H.D.'s Helen in Egypt. Like these works, Johnson's ARK was written over long stretches of time, becoming a lifetime "preoccupation" and "the poem of a life". Johnson's last book, The Shrubberies, was published in 2001 and, according to the critic Stephen Burt, "showed a poet no less spiritual than the author of ARK but also one given to extreme concision." Publications Poetry *''A Line of Poetry, A Row of Trees''. Highlands, NC: Nantahalla Foundation, 1964. *''Assorted Jungles: Rousseau'' (limited edition). San Francisco: Auerhahn Press, 1966.Books, Published work, Ronald Johnson, Map of Kansas Literature. Web, Oct. 12, 2014. *''GORSE/GOOSE/ROSE, and other poems''. Bloomington, IN: David Ahlsted, for Indiana University Fine Arts Department, 1966. *''Sun Flowers''. England: John Furnival, 1966. *''Io and the Ox-Eye Daisy''. Dunsyre, Scotland, UK: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1965. *''The Book of the Green Man. New York: Norton, 1967; London: Longmans Green, 1967; Devon, UK: UniformBooks, 2015. **Autumn (from ''The Book of the Green Man). Lugano: 1966. *''The Round Earth on Flat Paper'' (limited edition). Urbana, IL: Finial Press, 1968. *''Reading 1 and Reading 2'' (limited edition). Urbana, IL: Finial Press, 1968. *''Balloons for Moonles Nights'' (limited edition). Urbana, IL: Finial Press, 1968. *''Valley of the Many-Colored Grasses''. New York: Norton, 1969. *''Songs of the Earth''. San Francisco: Grabhorn-Hoyem, 1970. *''Reindeer Snowball''. Urbana, IL: Finial Press, 1970. *''Maze / Mane / Wane''. Pomegranate Press, 1973. *''Eyes and Objects''. Highlands, NC: Jargon Press, 1976. *''RADI OS I-IV''. Berkeley, CA: Sand Dollar, 1977. *''Miss Dorothy's Mashed Potatoes''. San Francisco: Zero Ox, 1977? *''The Book of Adam''. San Francisco: Zero Ox, 1980. *''ARK: The foundations. 1-33''. San Francisco: North Point Press, 1980. *''ARK: The spires, 34-39''. Roswell, NM: DBA Editions, 1980. *''ARK: The ramparts''. San Francisco: Zero Ox, 1980-1983? *''ARK 50: Spires 34-50''. New York: Dutton, 1984. *''The Balanchine, and other spires''. San Francisco: Zero Ox, 1985. *''ARK 44: The rod of Aasron''. Milwaukee, WI: Woodland Pattern Book Center, 1985. *''ARK''. Albuquerque, NM: Living Batch Press, 1996 ** (edited by Peter O'Leary). Chicago: Flood Editions, 2013. *''Roadside: Deserts to prairie'' (broadside). Ellsworth, ME : Backwoods Broadsides, 1996. *''To Do As Adam Did: Selected poems'' (edited with introduction by Peter O'Leary). Jersey City, NJ: Talisman House, 2000. *''The Shrubberies'' (edited by Peter O'Leary). Chicago: Flood Editions, 2001. *''Radi os''. Chicago: Flood Editions, 2005. Non-fiction *''The Aficionado's Southwestern Cooking''. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1968; Albuquerque, NM: Living Batch Press, 1993. *''The American Table'' (illustrated by James McGarrell). New York: Morrow, 1984; Weston, CT: Silver Springs, 2000. *''Southwestern Cooking: New and old''. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1985. *''Sample Fare: Discovering the pleasures of real food''. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989. *''Company Fare''. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991. Translated *Erik Satie, Sports & Divertissements (Satie's notes, in French, to the piano pieces "Sports" and "Divertissements"). Edinburgh: Wild Hawthorne Press, 1965; Urbana, IL: Finial Press, 1969. *''The Spirit Walks, the Rocks Will Talk: Eccentric tanslations from two eccentrics'' (with Guy Davenport). Highlands, NC: Jargon Press, 1969. Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.Search results = au:Ronald Johnson 1998, WorldCat, OCLC Online Computer Library Center Inc. Web, May 27, 2018. See also * List of U.S. poets References External links ;Poems *Ronald Johnson 1935-1998 at the Poetry Foundation *Writing Samples *[http://www.webdelsol.com/Facture/poems/ronaldjohnson.htm from ''The Shrubberies] *7 Poems ;Books *''The Book of the Green Man, available on-line from "Light & Dust" ;About *Ronald Johnson at Map of Kansas Literature *Biography by Eric Murphy Selinger *Height of Spring 1999 An essay Jonathan Williams wrote on Johnson in 1999. *"Ronald Johnson's "Ark": A poem in three dimensions" by Stephen Burt *the arches: A Ronald Johnson site Site devoted to Johnson, with biography, bibliography, interview, and select poems *"[https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/ronald-johnsons-ark-a-poem-in-three-dimensions Ronald Johnson's ''Ark: A poem in three dimensions]," The New Yorker ;Etc. *Ronald Johnson Papers housed at the Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas Category:1935 births Category:1998 deaths Category:American poets Category:People from Clark County, Kansas Category:LGBT writers from the United States Category:20th-century poets Category:English-language poets Category:Poets Category:LGBT poets